Page 93 of Wicked Mafia Beast
Thirty minutes is twenty-nine more than I need.
The first guard outside the loading dock dies quiet. My hand over his mouth, my arm around his throat, pressure on the carotid until his body goes limp. I lower him to the concrete and step over him.
The second guard hears the first one drop and turns toward me with his weapon half-raised. I close the distance in two strides, catch the barrel, twist it out of his grip, and drive the stock into his solar plexus. He folds. I put him down with a knee to the temple.
I move through the warehouse the way I moved through Volkov's compound at twenty. Cold and methodical, each step placed with intention, my breathing steady through my nose, my wounded arm tucked close to my ribs while my right hand does the work.
Two more guards enter the corridor. The first one swings a baton at my head and I duck under it, drive my fist into his kidney, and slam his face into the concrete wall hard enough to leave a dentin the plaster. The second pulls a knife and I catch his wrist, twist it behind his back until his shoulder pops, and drop him with an elbow to the base of his skull. He hits the ground twitching.
A third one at the far end of the corridor takes one look at his two colleagues crumpled on the floor and runs. I let him go. He'll spread the word about what's coming.
I reach the central room. Kick the door off its hinges. And there she is.
My heart unclenches for the first time since I saw her get shot.
She’s not dead, I repeat over and over until my head believes what my eyes are telling me.
She's on her feet in the middle of the warehouse with blood on her face and fire in her blue eyes and Seamus Malone doubled over behind her, clutching his jaw.
She hit him.
Good girl.
My woman punched the most powerful man in the Malone empire in the face and she's standing with her fists clenched and her chest heaving and she is the most magnificent thing I have ever seen in my life.
Our eyes meet across the warehouse and every shattered piece of the last three hours fades. She's alive. She's on her feet. And defiant as ever.
The guards in the room raise their weapons. I handle them. My body moves on muscle memory and decades of training and the cold precision of a man who has one purpose and will not bestopped. Four men. Thirty seconds. They go down and I don't register the details because my eyes keep pulling back to her.
She's standing. She's breathing. She's alive.
I run all those facts through my head again to help keep me from turning feral.
Seamus backs against the wall and my hand closes around his throat before he can open his mouth. I lift him off the ground with one arm, his polished shoes kicking against the wall, his fingers scrabbling at my wrist, and the pulse hammering beneath my fingers feels like a countdown. His throat is soft under my grip, the cartilage flexing, and one squeeze, one real squeeze, would crush it. His face turns purple. His eyes bulge. The wet, choking sounds coming out of his mouth are nothing like the smooth voice that destroyed Onyx's mother.
Every cell in my body says finish it. End him. The twelve-year-old boy who survived Volkov and the forty-four-year-old man who found the woman he loves tied to a chair with blood on her face are in complete agreement for the first time in thirty years. Kill him.
"Kon." Her voice reaches me through the red haze, cracked and raw and shaking. "Kon, please. Come back to me."
My hand tightens. Seamus's kicks grow weaker.
"Please." Her voice again. Closer now. Breaking on the word. "I need the man, Kon. Not the Beast. Come back."
The man she's calling for is the one who cooks breakfast and grows roses and sat outside her locked door all night without knocking. That man doesn't kill with his bare hands in a warehouse while the woman he loves watches.
The Beast inside me wants to squeeze the life out of the man who hurt the woman I love. But one look in her eyes and I can't find it in me to be that man in front of her.
I let go.
Seamus drops to the concrete, gasping, clutching his throat. I stand over him, my hand still curled in the shape of his neck, the phantom pulse still beating against my fingers.
I turn toward her.
She runs. Crashes into my chest so hard my wounded arm screams and my ribs protest and I do not give a single damn because her arms are around my neck and her face is pressed against my throat and the warmth of her body against mine is proof that she is here, she is real, she is alive.
I wrap both arms around her and hold on with everything I have. My face buries in her blood-matted hair and beneath the copper and the smoke I catch it, honey and musk and her, the scent that has become my definition of home.
She pulls back. Grabs my face in both hands, her palms warm and sticky with blood against my jaw, her blue eyes swimming, tears cutting clean tracks through the dirt and dried blood on her cheeks.
